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NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION http://www.thecodexmind.com

The Code of The e x Traordinary Mind

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The

C o d eof The

exTraordinary

M i n dten Unconventional laws to redefine

yoUr life & sUcceed on yoUr own terms

vishen lakhiani Founder oF Mindvalley

t

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Sign up today to get exclusive accesss to our authors, exclusive bonuses, and the most authoritative, useful, and cutting-edge information on health,

wellness, fitness, and living your life to the fullest.

Visit us online at RodaleWellness.com Join us at RodaleWellness.com/Join

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

© 2016 by Vishen Lakhiani

Simultaneously published as trade hardcover and international paperback by Rodale Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Rodale books may be purchased for business or promotional use or for special sales. For information, please write to: Special Markets Department, Rodale Inc., 733 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

Printed in the United States of America

Rodale Inc. makes every effort to use acid-free a, recycled paper c.

Book design by Christine Gaugler

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978–1–62336–708–4 hardcover

ISBN-13: 978–1–62336–758–9 paperback

Distributed to the trade by Macmillan

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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 paperback

lWe inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them.

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To my family: Kristina, Hayden, and Eve.

You’re the most important thing in my life.

And to our parents, Mohan and Roopi, Virgo and Ljubov, for allowing us

to forge our own beliefs and question the Brules, even as kids.

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Contents

Before You Begin: Know ThaT This is noT Your TYpical BooK ■ ixinTroducTion ■ xiii

Part I: LIvIng In the CuLturesCaPe: how You were shaPed bY the worLd around You

ChaPter 1 transcend the Culturescape ■ 3Where We Learn to Question the Rules of the World We Live In

ChaPter 2 Question the brules ■ 19Where We Learn That Much of How the World Runs Is Based on

Bulls**t Rules Passed Down from Generation to Generation

Part II: the awakenIng: the Power to Choose Your versIon of the worLd

ChaPter 3 Practice Consciousness engineering ■ 45Where We Learn How to Accelerate Our Growth by Consciously

Choosing What to Accept or Reject from the Culturescape

ChaPter 4 rewrite Your Models of reality ■ 65Where We Learn to Choose and Upgrade Our Beliefs

ChaPter 5 upgrade Your systems for Living ■ 91Where We Discover How to Get Better at Life

by Constantly Updating Our Daily Systems

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Part III: reCodIng YourseLf: transforMIng Your Inner worLd

ChaPter 6 bend reality ■ 113Where We Identify the Ultimate State of Human Existence

ChaPter 7 Live in blissipline ■ 129Where We Learn about the Important Discipline

of Maintaining Daily Bliss

ChaPter 8 Create a vision for Your future ■ 149Where We Learn How to Make Sure That the Goals We’re Chasing

Will Really Lead to Long-Term Happiness

Part Iv: beCoMIng extraordInarY: ChangIng the worLdChaPter 9 be unfuckwithable ■ 171

Where We Learn How to Be Fear-Proof

ChaPter 10 embrace Your Quest ■ 187Where We Learn How to Put It All Together and

Live a Life of Meaning

appendix: Tools for Your JourneY ■ 209

The code of The exTraordinarY Mind: The online experience ■ 241

glossarY ■ 245

sources ■ 249

acKnowledgMenTs ■ 252

index ■ 255

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ix

before You begIn: know that thIs I s not Your tYPICaL book

In fact, I would be hesitant to call this a personal growth book. It’s more

of a personal disruption book. This book forces you to rethink aspects of

your life that may have been running on autopilot for years.

Which means that within months of reading this book, you may find

yourself no longer accepting certain aspects of your current reality. Your

relationships, your career, your goals, your spiritual beliefs may all be

forced to change as you come to understand that many of your beliefs and

past decisions were never taken on by choice—but were installed by default.

This book is designed to disrupt the way you see the world and to give

you the tools to shift the world through cognitive changes in your mind. In

short, it creates an awakening. Once you see the patterns this book unveils,

you cannot “unsee” them.

Depending on your worldview, you will either love this book or hate this

book. That’s by design. It’s because we grow through discomfort or insight.

But never through apathy.

In addition to the ideas it contains, this book is also unique in several ways:

new words: This book contributes more than 20 new words to the

English language. I had to create new words to describe (sometimes humor-

ously) the new models for living that you’ll be introduced to. Words are

powerful, as they influence how we see the world. Once you understand

these words, your perspective of certain things will change.

the onLIne exPerIenCe: This book comes with its own custom-de-

signed app with hours of additional content, practices, training, and more.

Do you especially like a particular idea from one of the thinkers I mention

in the book—for example, Peter Diamandis? You can use the app to dive in

deeper and listen to my full interview with him. Do you really enjoy a par-

ticular technique I share? The app will let you play a video of me guiding

you through the technique. You’ll find gorgeous images, photos, ideas, and

more, all on the Online Experience available for web, Android, and iOS.

You can therefore read this book in a few hours, or you can choose to spend

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x Before You Begin : Know ThaT This is noT Your T Ypical BooK

days exploring and deep-diving into the full content. Access it from www.

mindvalley.com/extraordinary.

the soCIaL LearnIng PLatforM: Since this book is about question-

ing life, as I wrote it, I began questioning the traditional ways books are

made. One of my biggest annoyances with the idea of a “book” in today’s

world is that you cannot easily interact with fellow readers or with the

author. For this book, I decided to fix this flaw. I had my team develop a

social learning platform to allow authors and readers to interact and learn

from each other. This is the first of its kind in the world. You can interact

with other readers, share ideas, and even communicate with me directly

from your mobile device or computer when you sign up for the online expe-

rience. This makes this book perhaps one of the most technologically

hooked-up volumes in history. You can access the Social Learning Platform

via the Online Experience on www.mindvalley.com/extraordinary.

LearnIng MethodoLogY: This book is designed to help you learn

through a learning model upgrade I call Consciousness Engineering. Once

you understand this, every idea in the book starts to connect. Furthermore,

you’ll learn HOW TO learn. After reading this book, every other book you

read on personal growth will make more sense and you’ll absorb their ideas

better.

wrItIng stYLe: My best and most meaningful conversations tend to

happen with friends over a few drinks in a social setting. We’re vulnerable,

we’re honest, we’re open, we’re transparent. When I have these conversa-

tions on life and business (often over a glass of wine), I love sketching on

napkins to illustrate ideas. I bring this same style into this book. You’ll find

the napkin illustrations, the personal stories, the raw vulnerability. I wrote

things down I never thought I’d share publicly, but I share here because I

feel others can learn from my errors.

CoLLaboratIon: This book involves more than 200 hours of inter-

views with many of the leading players on the world stage today. Arianna

Huffington and Dean Kamen edited chapters. Richard Branson, Peter Dia-

mandis, Michael Beckwith, and Ken Wilber gave me hours of one-on-one

discussions and interviews. I even got to pose a question (via my wife) to the

Dalai Lama. I integrate all of these ideas into the Code because I consider

these men and women to be role models we can all learn from.

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Before You Begin : Know ThaT This is noT Your T Ypical BooK xi

thIs Is four books In one: I consider my time (and yours) precious,

and I dislike reading personal growth books that drag on and on for 70,000

words trying to teach a relatively simple concept. I have no wish to stretch

out an idea—that just means wasted time for busy readers who understand

concepts fast. So this book is really packed with knowledge. To offer you

the best value possible, in each of the book’s four parts, I’ve tried to provide

a richly detailed yet cohesive set of ideas. Each part stands well alone, yet

together, they form a philosophy for living. My aim was to deliver maxi-

mum wisdom, in a fun way, in minimal time.

ConneCt wIth Me: I love being in touch with my readers.

Facebook.com/vishen

Instagram.com/vishen

Twitter.com/vishen

(Use hashtag #codeXmind)

MY web sItes: To learn more about me and my work:

MindvalleyAcademy.com

VishenLakhiani.com

Mindvalley.com

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xiii

IntroduCtIon

I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.

—elon MusK

I was going on stage to speak. But it was no ordinary stage. At this particu-

lar event in Calgary, Alberta, they had slotted me last—in a spot

reserved for the least popular speakers. Before me, a whole procession

of awe-inspiring names had taken the stage. His Holiness the Dalai

Lama—who dished out wisdom like Yoda in orange robes. Then Nobel

Prize winner F. W. de Klerk, former President of South Africa. Then Sir

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group. Followed by Tony Hsieh,

CEO of Zappos.

And finally on day three, it was my turn. I was a gap filler—not a brand

name that drew people to a conference like this but a random speaker slotted

in to fill a space when budgets to book the big-name speakers were spent.

I stepped on stage to the biggest audience I had ever spoken to: waiting

expectantly. I was nervous but had secretly downed a shot of vodka at the

lobby bar to calm my nerves. My ripped jeans and untucked shirt bespoke

nothing other than the fact that I was a man with poor fashion sense. I was

thirty-three years old.

When I got on stage, I spoke about an idea very dear to me—about the

way human beings view life, goals, happiness, and meaning. By the end, I

saw that I had the audience in joy and in tears. Even more surprising, at the

end of the conference, the audience had voted me best speaker. (I tied with

Zappos’ Tony Hsieh.) This was a big deal, given the major names I was

sharing that stage with and the fact that I had little experience as a speaker.

But I had gotten more votes than the Dalai Lama (the fact that I take mild

pride in this while he probably doesn’t care is the reason his title is His

Holiness and mine is just Mr.).

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xiv inTroducTion

I spoke that day about what it means to have an extraordinary life. It

does not happen by chance, or through hard work, or through a unique set

of skills. There is actually a methodology that anyone can employ—a code

you can learn—that will catapult your life into the realm of the

extraordinary.

These ideas have worked not just for a few individuals but also for hun-

dreds of thousands of people. This code is being used in schools around the

world, in corporations to train their staff, and by individuals in countries

all over the world to find meaning and happiness in their lives. It is a code

that I have learned through trial and error and by paying very close atten-

tion to some of the most extraordinary people in the world.

My speech went on to get almost half a million views on YouTube

despite being almost an hour long, and I received suggestions to write a

book. But I didn’t feel I was ready. Who was I to be an author?

Then three years later, something else happened. I was sitting with Rich-

ard Branson on Necker Island after a party, and when most of the other

guests had left and it was just the two of us, I shared with him some of my

ideas and theories on what made him and others extraordinary. Branson

turned to me and said, “You should write a book.” Branson wasn’t just an

entrepreneur I admired. Because of his book Losing My Virginity, he was

also my favorite author. This was the push I needed to get cracking on The

Code of the Extraordinary Mind. It would still take another three years

before the first chapter would be written. But the book is now complete,

and I’m honored to place it in your hands.

I share these thoughts with you only to impress upon you how powerful

the ideas in this book can be. This is not your typical personal growth

book. In fact, it’s not a regular nonfiction book of any sort. It’s designed

and written in a way to take really complex ideas (the keys to success,

meaning, and happiness, for instance) and break them down into frame-

works and models that anyone can understand. And I mean anyone (as I

was writing this, I received a video showing a teacher in India teaching

some of the ideas in this book to several hundred Indian schoolchildren).

And these ideas work. If you knew my full background (more about that

in the chapters to come), you would know that I should never have had the

success I have today. The odds should have been squarely stacked against

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inTroducTion xv

me. Yet, I’ve been blessed to live a life that’s “extraordinary”—in short, a

life that by reasonable odds I should never have experienced, including:

■ Turning a hobby—personal growth—into a company, Mindvalley,

with 500,000 students, 2 million subscribers, and a passionate fan

base that loves what we stand for.

■ Starting Mindvalley with no bank loans or venture capital and,

despite impossible odds, building it into one of the most innovative

companies in our space.

■ Creating an award-winning workplace that employs people from

more than 40 countries and that was voted one of the coolest offices

on the planet in 2012 in an Inc. magazine readers’ poll.

■ Marrying an incredible woman and having two wonderful kids we’re

in the process of raising.

■ Starting my own festival, A-Fest, that takes place in exotic locations

around the world and attracts thousands of incredible people to apply

for sought-after tickets.

■ Experiencing spiritual awakenings that changed my understanding of

physical reality.

■ Raising and donating millions of dollars for charities.

■ Getting an incredible offer to write this book (thank you, Rodale Inc.!).

Yet I can tell you with certainty that I was not born extraordinary. My

life should have been fairly ordinary. I grew up in Malaysia before moving

to the United States. I always considered myself a geek and dealt with

self-esteem issues most of my life.

I almost flunked out of the University of Michigan, and just two years

after graduation in 1999, I had the proud honor of being fired twice, losing

my businesses twice, and being dead broke on multiple occasions.

I failed at over a dozen start-up ideas before one idea—Mindvalley—

clicked. Then, at age twenty-eight, I had to leave the country I dreamed of

living in, and I moved back to my parents’ house. I spent the next six years

struggling to get my little business going while living with my wife in a

bedroom in my parents’ home and driving a tiny Nissan March.

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xvi inTroducTion

Just one year before my speech in Calgary, I was nowhere close to

accomplishing my goals. I was in greater debt than I would have been if I

had never started my business.

And then at the age of thirty-two, I experienced a shift so powerful that in

a few short years, my life went through a total and radical transformation.

All of this happened because despite my ordinary beginnings, I do have

one unique skill that has served me time and again. It’s a skill I used to

develop the framework for this book—a framework I’ve designed to help

you step out of whatever ordinary circumstances you’d like to move beyond.

If I had to summarize this skill, it’s this—I’m a sponge when it comes to

learning from others and connecting the dots. I am fortunate to have the

ability to soak up knowledge and wisdom easily from all sorts of people—

from billionaires to monks—and then “codify” these ideas, connect those

bits of knowledge, and construct unique new models for understanding the

world. This is my gift.

In the world of computers, you might call this being a hacker. To hack,

in that world, is to cut something apart, break it to the core, and then reas-

semble it to make it better than before.

That’s what I do. I was trained as a computer engineer, but I was born

with a mind that loved learning how to hack life. I see patterns that others

sometimes miss and connect dots in very unusual ways.

In this book, I’m going to share with you some of these dots—10, in

particular. I’ve collected them through my life experiences and from listen-

ing to brilliant thinkers, leaders, creators, and artists who pursue greatness

in their everyday lives.

As I learned from these extraordinary people, my life grew exponen-

tially. I became who I am because when I was broke and struggling, I made

it a point to consistently seek out and listen to people who were just a step

ahead of me. I’d take in their wisdom, assimilate the lessons, and grow.

Then I’d level up, make new connections, and learn from people a step

ahead from that level. And on and on.

Eventually, I got to pose questions to people like Elon Musk, Richard

Branson, Peter Diamandis, Arianna Huffington, and Ken Wilber. Their

wisdom is shared in this book along with the distilled wisdom from more

than 200 hours of interviews with more than 50 extraordinary minds who

live life by their own rules while making an amazing impact on the planet.

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inTroducTion xvii

I also founded Mindvalley, which grew to become one of the world’s

leading companies in human transformation. With more than 2 million

subscribers, we’ve been at the forefront of much of the new ideas happening

globally on personal growth. The access to wisdom and minds I get from

Mindvalley’s network gives me another unique edge in writing this book.

My talent is to take all of these ideas and knowledge and unify them into a

single path, a path you can follow to break the bounds of the ordinary and to

take you to all those beautiful places you may have dreamed of going as a kid.

Here’s an overview of what we’ll be exploring.

ten Laws for an extraordInarY LIfe

There’s an invisible code as to how the world operates—how human beings

interact with each other, how we worship, relate with our parents, perform

at work, fall in love, make money, and stay healthy and happy. I started my

career as a computer programmer spending hours in front of a screen trying

to understand the code of machines. Today, I’m more obsessed with the

code of how the human world operates—and, believe me, this code is just

as hackable.

Just as a programmer can program a computer to do specific tasks by

understanding its code, you can program your life and the world around

you to improve, enhance the way you live and the experiences you have in

this lifetime.

But first, you have to see this code. And that’s where this book comes in.

This book is divided into four parts and ten chapters. Each part looks at

a different level of the code and represents an expansion of your state of

awareness. Each chapter provides and describes a law that takes you fur-

ther into this expansion.

Part I. Living in the Culturescape: How You Were Shaped by the World

Around You

Part II. The Awakening: The Power to Choose Your Version of the

World

Part III. Recoding Yourself: Transforming Your Inner World

Part Iv. Becoming Extraordinary: Changing the World

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xviii inTroducTion

These four parts represent a gradual expansion of your levels of aware-

ness of who you are and just what you’re capable of. The illustration below

shows these levels as an expanding circle of awareness.

Within these four worlds I’ll be sharing 10 laws, each of which builds on

the one before. This is the Code of the Extraordinary Mind.

Part I. Living in the Culturescape: how You were shaped by the world around You

This section looks at the world we live in with all its messy and conflicting

ideas, beliefs, and patterns that we’ve invented in an attempt to keep

humanity safe and under control. The problem is that many of these pat-

terns and rules long moved past their expiration date. In this section, you

learn to question the rules of the world around you—from your religion to

your relationships to your career and education. Here we introduce you to

Laws 1 and 2.

1. transCend the CuLturesCaPe. We’ll explore the tangled web of

the culturescape—humanity’s collective rules, beliefs, and practices about

life. These are the rules that tell you how to exist, how to plan your life,

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inTroducTion xix

how to define success and happiness. Following them is a sure path to being

ordinary and safe. But I’m going to urge you to instead jump on the thrill-

ing, sometimes uncertain, yet exciting ride of an unrestricted life. It all

starts with asking a few disruptive questions.

2. QuestIon the bruLes. Here you’ll discover how to identify bulls**t

rules or Brules that should have expired generations ago but that still infect

our lives. Getting rid of our Brules is like shedding old dirty clothing and

putting on something fresh. It’s liberating. Extraordinary people tend to

have an allergy to Brules. You will, too, as we explore how Brules can keep

us tied up in older ways of living and limit our creativity and growth.

Part II. the awakening: the Power to Choose Your version of the world

As you learn to question the Brules of the culturescape, you also learn that

you can choose your own rules. Here we look at the interface between you

and the world around you. What ideas and values do you choose to believe?

What do you choose to reject? You’ll learn to consciously mold the beliefs,

habits, and practices that shape your life while you discard old beliefs and

systems that you no longer need. The method for doing this is a process I

call “consciousness engineering.”

3. PraCtICe ConsCIousness engIneerIng. Here’s where you’ll

learn how to think like a hacker and discover the crucial framework for

understanding HOW your beliefs and practices shape you. You’ll learn to see

beliefs as “models of reality” and habits and practices as “systems for living.”

You’ll cut to the core of who you are and learn to rebuild and remake yourself

anew through this powerful mental model for growth and awakening.

4. rewrIte Your ModeLs of reaLItY. These are the beliefs ingrained

in you since you were a child. Many are disempowering and keep you stuck

in troublesome, painful, or mediocre ways of viewing the world. Here you’ll

learn how to swap out disempowering models and replace them with newer,

more empowering ones. The world reflects your beliefs—so imagine what

happens when you take on the beliefs of extraordinary minds.

5. uPgrade Your sYsteMs for LIvIng. Your systems for living are

your daily practices for getting on with life, from eating to working to parent-

ing to making love. New systems for living are being discovered all the time.

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xx inTroducTion

Most just never make it into our formal education system. So most of us

learn, love, work, meditate, and parent using models that are suboptimal or

even damaging. You’ll learn how to observe the systems that run the world

(and your life) and how to optimize them to be more powerful than ever

before. You’ll also learn how to curate and install updated systems for liv-

ing to make you a far more optimized human being.

And then we get to the second half the book.

Thus far the book has been about your functioning in the outer world

and how to first break the rules, and then create new ones that lead to

greater growth and happiness for yourself. As you get better at this, the

next step is to explore your inner world. How can you transform the

world within you? We’ll be bringing a beautiful order and balance to

this world.

Part III. recoding Yourself: transforming Your Inner world

In Part III we explore how to hack consciousness itself, including alternate

ideas of what it is to be human, to be happy, and to pursue goals that will

ultimately lead to a fulfilling life. We also explore the idea that conscious-

ness can shape the world you experience—an idea I call “bending reality.”

6. bend reaLItY. This is a model of reality that suggests that there is an

optimal state of living where everything seems to just click and luck seems to

be something you can control. I’ve met many remarkable people who seem

to exist in this state. Some were monks. Some were billionaires. I’ll dissect

this state of being and share with you how you, too, can get there.

7. LIve In bLIssIPLIne. Happiness is hackable, and Blissipline is a beau-

tiful discipline for leveling up your happiness every day and feeling limit-

less. We’ll explore why happiness can be so elusive, and you’ll discover

some of the best practices I’ve discovered for hacking happiness and other

positive emotions.

8. Create a vIsIon for Your future. Most of us are trained by the

Brules of the world to pursue the wrong goals. I think much of modern goal

setting is absolute rubbish. I’ll show you how to set goals that truly, deeply

lead to happiness, create meaning, and allow you to live a life that’s exciting

and purposeful.

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inTroducTion xxi

Part Iv. becoming extraordinary: Changing the world

In this section you learn how to go from creating your own rules for the

world and mastery of your inner self to going forth and actually changing

the world. This is the point when you can truly say you’ve become extraor-

dinary. You’ve not just mastered your inner and outer worlds—you’re using

this power to push humanity forward and make a positive dent in the uni-

verse. In order to do this, you need two things: to be unfuckwithable and

to find your quest.

9. be unfuCkwIthabLe. Here you learn how to be so rock solid in

your own self that judgments from others or fear of loss no longer affect

you. You’re unshakeable in your journey through the world. Changing the

world is tough. This chapter shows you how to be strong enough to weather

the storm.

10. eMbraCe Your Quest. And then we come to Chapter 10. Here

you learn to go beyond just living in the world to actually changing it by

discovering your quest. When you find it (and I’ll teach you a method for

doing so), you take that final step toward living an extraordinary life.

After you finish the 10 chapters that unveil and teach you the code, I did

not want to keep you hanging as you voyage out into the world. So I’ve

included two bonus chapters on how to take all the ideas and tools and

practices in this book and unify them into a daily practice.

bonus section: tools for Your Journey

PraCtICe transCendenCe. In this section I’ll teach you a 20-minute

daily practice called the Six-Phase. It’s a workout for the mind that helps

lock in the elements of the code and accelerate your awakening. It’s one of

the greatest personal growth and productivity tools I’ve discovered.

foLLowIng the Code of the extraordInarY MInd. In this sec-

tion I summarize in one place all the key tools and practices you can bring

into your life to live the code.

The bonus sections are supported by the Online Experience. You can

download the app to get specific trainings, deeper interviews, and further

models to apply. You can also join the online learning community to stay in

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xxii inTroducTion

touch with me and learn and share with other readers. All of this comes free

with this book and is available at www.mindvalley.com/extraordinary.

MY ProMIse to You

The ideas and techniques you’ll learn in this book are based on the best

models and systems I’ve found for performance, growth, and success from

years of working with experts in personal development and human

transformation.

I will give you the tools to bend the universe to attain the success, pleas-

ure, and purpose that may have eluded you despite your best efforts. I know

these methods work because I’ve used them myself, and I’ve helped millions

around the world adopt them through various online programs, apps, and

talks. This book will be the first time I bring it all together in one place.

You’ll discover mental models for radically shifting your understanding

of the world and your role within it. Chapter by chapter, you’ll learn spe-

cific systems to create the biggest leaps in your life—of body, mind, heart,

and soul.

Now, let’s get started.

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